“He had his turn with Lady Julia,” said Bell, “and we must have ours now.”

“At any rate, Mrs Eames won’t tell us to do our duty and to beware of being too beautiful,” said Lily.

Mary and John came into the room before their mother returned; then came Mrs Eames, and a few minutes afterwards the cake and wine arrived.  It certainly was rather dull, as none of the party seemed to be at their ease.  The grandeur of Mr Crosbie was too great for Mrs Eames and her daughter, and John was almost silenced by the misery of his position.  He had not yet answered Miss Roper’s letter, nor had he even made up his mind whether he would answer it or no.  And then the sight of Lily’s happiness did not fill him with all that friendly joy which he should perhaps have felt as the friend of her childhood.  To tell the truth, he hated Crosbie, and so he had told himself; and had so told his sister also very frequently since the day of the party.

“I tell you what it is, Molly,” he had said, “if there was any way of doing it, I’d fight that man.”

“What; and make Lily wretched?”

“She’ll never be happy with him.  I’m sure she won’t.  I don’t want to do her any harm, but yet I’d like to fight that man,—­if I only knew how to manage it.”

And then he bethought himself that if they could both be slaughtered in such an encounter it would be the only fitting termination to the present state of things.  In that way, too, there would be an escape from Amelia, and, at the present moment, he saw none other.

When he entered the room he shook hands with all the party from Allington, but, as he told his sister afterwards, his flesh crept when he touched Crosbie.  Crosbie, as he contemplated the Eames family sitting stiff and ill at ease in their own drawing-room chairs, made up his mind that it would be well that his wife should see as little of John Eames as might be when she came to London;—­not that he was in any way jealous of her lover.  He had learned everything from Lily,—­all, at least, that Lily knew,—­and regarded the matter rather as a good joke.  “Don’t see him too often,” he had said to her, “for fear he should make an ass of himself.”  Lily had told him everything,—­all that she could tell; but yet he did not in the least comprehend that Lily had, in truth, a warm affection for the young man whom he despised.

“Thank you, no,” said Crosbie.  “I never do take wine in the middle of the day.”

“But a bit of cake?” And Mrs Eames by her look implored him to do her so much honour.  She implored Captain Dale, also, but they were both inexorable.  I do not know that the two girls were at all more inclined to eat and drink than the two men; but they understood that Mrs Eames would be broken-hearted if no one partook of her delicacies.  The little sacrifices of society are all made by women, as are also the great sacrifices of life.  A man who is good for anything is always ready for his duty, and so is a good woman always ready for a sacrifice.